Jackson to fund Fairview School construction
Students crowd into the Fairview School cafeteria. Donated photo
The Jackson County Board of Commissioners voted this month to commit to funding construction and renovation of Fairview School, which was recently identified as the system’s top capital needs priority due to overcrowding and outdated design.
“Our number one priority is Fairview, and we need it now,” said Superintendent Dana Ayers in a presentation to the commission. “We need you to vote.”
Ayers and Deputy Superintendent Jake Buchanan came before commissioners during their July 9 work session to review the school system’s capital needs priorities and plead for movement on the Fairview School project.
Ayers told commissioners that Fairview School has been at the top of the capital needs priority list for a very long time and remains the biggest need within the school system. However, the list of capital needs is lengthy and just behind Fairview are projects like a traditional middle school, ADA upgrades at Smoky Mountain High School, a bus garage, erosion control, renovations at Blue Ridge School and more.
Because the school system has so many capital needs, county commissioners requested last year that JCPS undergo a facility study to determine which needs were most pressing. The county commission funded the study, conducted by Clark Nexsen, which found that several schools in the county are overcrowded and confirmed both the prioritization that JCPS had previously outlines, as well as the necessity of a traditional middle school.
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“The results that [Clark Nexsen] gave did not change Jackson County Public Schools’ priority list,” said Ayers at the July 9 meeting. “I’m here today because I’m a little disappointed because we haven’t seen any movement in the last 18 months. I do believe that part of that was it seemed like an insurmountable list of priorities that we had, so we want to focus today on the Fairview kitchen and cafeteria which is in dire need of not just an upgrade, but replacement.”
Fairview School serves over 800 students, the second-largest school in JCPS behind only Smoky Mountain High School, and its student body continues to grow. The facility study conducted by Clark Nexsen found that the cafeteria at Fairview is undersized by a minimum of 1,000 square feet and the kitchen is roughly 40% of the size it should be. In order to accommodate all students, Fairview starts lunch every day at 10:30 a.m. and continues through 1 p.m.
Additionally, the Fairview School is set up in pods, an outdated design system in which several classes are forced to share large circular rooms without walls to divide those spaces into individual classrooms. Plans to renovate the school include not only a new kitchen and cafeteria, but six additional classrooms.
“No one would tell you to build a pod school today,” said Buchanan. “While this does not mitigate the fact that we have classrooms divided up with bookshelves and tables and this doesn’t eliminate that, it does help to mitigate that. Particularly for kids that are older with bigger bodies trying to fit into those wedges.”
The facility study report from Clark Nexsen said “Fairview is most challenged with site constraints, ADA, cafeteria and classrooms configurations. Immediate need for new cafeteria, kitchen and minimum of six classrooms.”
This rendering shows the planned renovations to Fairview school. Donated photoThis rendering shows the planned renovations to Fairview school. Donated photo
Total costs for the construction and renovation are estimated at $18 million. The school system wanted commissioners to vote on the project this month in order to move toward its goal of going out to bid on the project next July, if not sooner. Estimates show the cost of the project increasing 5-10% each year.
The project would include a new cafeteria and kitchen at about 8,000 square feet, renovation of about 4,000 square feet of existing space and six new classrooms at 1,000 square feet each.
The school system has submitted the Fairview School renovation and construction project as part of its ask to the Department of Public Instruction Needs Based Capital Grant three times now but has not been able to secure that funding. Each time JCPS submits this project for the grant, both the Board of Education and the County Commission approve the project and commit to matching funds.
“We have approved this project before,” said Buchanan. “We have not been awarded those grants; we don’t feel that we are a good candidate for those grants compared to other districts.”
The Needs Based Capital Grant funds tend to be awarded to rural school districts that are using the funds to build completely new schools, as is the case in Macon County which was awarded $62 million for its new Franklin High School project.
“We’re not going to solve this problem with those Needs Based Capital Grants,” said Buchanan. “We might be able to go about other projects down the road, but to solve this problem, Needs Based Capital Grants is not going to be our option.”
While the school board, county commission and members of the community have known about the issues plaguing Fairview School for many years, there has been some hesitancy to address the issue amid the call for a traditional middle school. Jackson County Schools is unique among The Smoky Mountain News’ four-county coverage area — Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties, along with the Qualla Boundary — in that it does not have a typical middle school that exclusively serves sixth- through eighth-graders. Instead, there are four K-8 schools, serving almost 800 middle grade students — Fairview, Cullowhee Valley, Smoky Mountain Elementary and Scotts Creek.
However, Buchanan noted that the facility study verified that even if the county can build a traditional middle school in the near future, it will still be necessary to complete the Fairview School project.
“Even if we decide down the road to build a middle school, that space is still needed,” said Buchanan. “There’s still ADA issues in place, there’s still the cafeteria space issues in place, and you would still have a building full of rooms with bookshelves for classroom walls. That doesn’t go away if we continue the conversation about the middle school.”
Buchanan told the board that in his opinion, the community could disagree on the need for a traditional middle school in Jackson County, but that he did not believe a reasonable person could argue that the project at Fairview wasn’t necessary.
“We need this project at Fairview,” Buchanan said. “If we go down the road of a middle school, this is not money spent in waste, it is our top priority, we should move forward with it.”
The board voted unanimously to move forward with the project and permit county staff to identify funding for the project during its July 16 regular meeting.
According to Finance Director Darlene Fox, the county could seek two $10 million loans over two fiscal years and use sales taxes, including the quarter-cent sales tax, to pay those loans back.
